The Paraguayan health authorities on Tuesday declared a state of
emergency after an Asuncion hospital confirmed the nation's first
death for more than a century from yellow fever: a liver and kidney
disease spread by mosquitoes.
According to news reaching here, the dead man was a
24-year-oldfrom central Paraguayan department San Pedro who died in
Asuncion's Clinic as Hospital from renal and liver failure.
Adolfo Galeano, an epidemiologist and the hospitals director,
said the young man had fallen ill after hunting for monkeys with a
group of friends.
"What we suspected is now proven," Galeano told a Tuesday press
conference, adding that the hospital had studied a biopsy and
performed an autopsy to confirm the result.
He said that the body was also caring for 22-year-old Carlos
Leiva in its intensive care unit suffering from critical liver
failure and complications, after surgeons removed one of his
kidneys.
Leiva had been admitted by his relatives. He comes from the
village of Calle 8000, which is seven kilometers from San
Estanislao, the capital of San Pedro.
Carmen Serrano, Paraguay's representative to the Pan-American
Health Organization, said the outbreak of yellow fever was due to
monkeys moving to the edge of cities after forest destruction.
Forest fires recently destroyed thousands of hectares of crops and
forest in San Pedro.
During the same press conference, the nation's Health Minister,
Oscar Martinez, said that there were five confirmed yellow fever
cases in the nation.
"We are in the middle of investigating outbreaks of yellow
fever, and we are also intervening to destroy vectors in the towns
where they have been detected, including spraying, fumigation and
vaccination," Martinez said.
Authorities had already declared a state of emergency last week
after confirming two deaths from dengue fever in the northeast of
the country, close to the border with Brazil, and more than 300
suspected cases across the nation.
Gualberto Pinanez, head of the Ministry's sanitary vigilance
department, said that the yellow fever remains endemic in the
Amazon and that the Ministry would continue fighting the mosquito
that spreads the disease.
"We are about to take on a great deal of work. The situation is
very serious and merits the support of all the population to
prevent an epidemic," he said, adding that like hemorrhagic dengue
fever, yellow fever kills 75 percent of those who are seriously
affected.
The last yellow fever death in Paraguay was in 1904 and the last
confirmed cases of infection were in 1974.
(Xinhua News Agency February 7, 2008)